Electronic commerce, abbreviated as e-commerce, has been predominating in the market for decades. Several small and medium sized retailer firms/enterprises operating in the current retail market provide infrastructural support for locally installable application for mobile phones, to facilitate online, mobile shopping for customers. Further, with online shopping platforms accessible through web browsers, provided by e-commerce giants, including, Amazon, e-bay, Alibaba, Flipkart, etc., for example, online shopping is gaining an ever increasing grip in the retail market. Customers may prefer to shop online, and order products from anywhere, anytime, instead of walking physically to the retail stores, thus, saving time. Consumers are, therefore, able to browse a variety of products online, shop according to their preference, and order products by selecting different delivery options.
Some or all activities involved in an online shopping transaction, including customers' navigation through the available products for sale, selection of one or more products and their attributes such as color and size, addition of multiple products to the shopping cart, choosing a specific delivery option for the product, and selecting a preferred payment option for the product, can now be performed online. Typically, these actions are performed through a customer electronic device (e.g., a client computer, tablet, mobile device, smartphone) by accessing the retailer's online platform over the internet, either through a web browser, or through a locally installable mobile application provided by the retail service provider.
In the context of online transactions and e-commerce, cloud computing may obviate the upfront infrastructural costs for retailers. Retailers store information and data pertinent to the customers, such as their navigation history, frequency of logging on to the online service platform, goods/services of their particular interest, their geographical location, and their preferred modes of payment, to customize users' online shopping experience. Such information can now be stored in multiple databases of cloud-based servers, and is accessible through a shared pool of configurable computing resources within a cloud-computing environment. Further, with multiple client computing devices, including laptops, mobile phones, tablet computers, etc., connected to a cloud-based server through a communication network, communication and exchange of request and response message data between customers and retailers can now be facilitated in the current state of the art. Effectively, an industry of software products, platforms, and cloud-based services has emerged and evolved to a substantially advanced level, to serve and support the e-commerce industry. Inventory management systems, electronic, automated payment tools, logistics servers, Software as a Service (SaaS) and mobile device applications, collaborate to enhance users' experience, and maximize retailers' profitability.
Customers' ease of interaction with retail associates in a network connected e-commerce infrastructure, is, however, still a factor that drives the long-term retention of customers on online shopping portals. Several online retailer platforms and mobile applications strive to customize users' experience during online shopping, based on certain parameters. The optimum fulfillment and routing of customer inquiries and purchase orders in the context of modern e-commerce and physical retail infrastructure remains a challenge for retailers and customers alike. Consequently, customers often encounter problems such as, delay in product delivery, prolonged waiting time before the order is processed, inappropriate routing of the customer's requests, and so forth. For retailers this can mean lower customer satisfaction, negative user experiences and lost sales.
Some attempts have been currently made in the art to enhance users' online shopping experience, but these attempts have generally fallen short of addressing and mitigating the problems specifically mentioned above.
Further, many aspects of e-commerce enumerated above, such as inventory management, logistic issues, SaaS infrastructure, electronic payment tools, etc., are handled by specialty vendors. Most of the current retail transaction systems tackle and serve only a few of these aspects, such as a Customer Application designed to facilitate customers' access to available products for sale, a recommendation engine for tracking consumers' history of navigation and providing appropriate recommendations for products based on certain algorithms, an inventory management server for tracking the available inventory, or a logistics server for tracking shipment of products, and so forth. However, none of the current online retail transaction systems effectively integrates and addresses all of the aspects of e-commerce, commencing from the customers' navigation and ordering of products, to the last mile delivery phase. As a result, conventional systems and services often under-deliver, with respect to accuracy, time or general quality of service. Present e-commerce systems and architectures, especially mobile applications for online shopping, still suffer from awkward design, integration errors, and other fallacies, leading to unsatisfactory customer experience.
Considering the aforementioned problems, a need exists in the art to overcome the current challenges related to order placement, routing and fulfillment within the e-commerce domain, particularly to improve customers' overall experience during the process of online shopping through mobile applications.